through the trials and tribulations of life and infertility

6 Month Update:

It’s my baby’s half year birthday today! I’m shocked! I’m sure before we know it we will be celebrating his first birthday…

Baby G is such a pleasure to have around! He smiles all the time and he laughs a lot too. If I take him out anywhere he will smile and “chat” to strangers, so much so that every single time I’m stopped by a couple of strangers telling me what a lovely baby I have and how friendly he is. Two weeks ago I went to the bank, I was in the queue for about 5 minutes and 3 people were charmed by baby G in that short time. The very next day he charmed 10 people in the grocery store (Yes, I counted!) It’s all kind of people: men, women, old, young – they all respond to his smiles and laughs. Baby G is definitely a social baby – he doesn’t even mind when strangers pick him up and hold him. He also loves other children – his face lights up when he sees another child and he just wants to touch them and play with them.

Baby G is such an independent strong willed baby. He wants to do everything himself. He wants to feed himself, he wants to hold his bottle, and now lately he wants to drink from my glass too. I’ve let him drink some water, very diluted fruit juice (that is how I drink it) and some Yogi.sip.

Lately he’s also been getting angry with me – like when I put him in his car seat, and he looks like he wants to throw a little temper tantrum. Luckily it doesn’t last very long…

The paediatrician mentioned this morning that baby G might be left handed – he noticed that he takes things easily with his left hand, and I must say he is not the first person to mention this to me. I’ve not been convinced of this because to me it seems that he does not favour a specific hand. The paediatrician said that generally it is only noticeable from about 18 months which hand a baby prefers, but his own son clearly favoured his left hand from very small and it looked the same with baby G to him. I guess time will tell, but like I said, I’m not convinced. I see him all day and sometimes he does things with his left hand and other times with his right hand.

Measurements on 26/06/2012:

Weight: 7.85 kg (just under the 50th percentile)

Height: 69 cm (about 75th percentile)

Head Circumference: 44 cm (also just above the 50th percentile)

Eating: Things were better this past month. I went right back to basics, started with organic brown rice cereal and fortunately baby G likes that, so most of the time he will eat that. Then I mixed the rice cereal with sweet potatoes and pumpkin and he ate that too. This past weekend I introduced yogurt and baby G absolutely loves that! I’ve also given him some teething biscuits and he seems to like it too. He still doesn’t want to eat avocado and to be honest I haven’t tried banana again because he really hated that. At least he isn’t gagging and spitting anymore. He had a few days where he still refused to eat, but for the past 2 weeks we haven’t had any of those either.

Sleeping: I’ve been saying that baby G does not sleep well, but lately I’ve decided that I was wrong. You see at night he goes to sleep easily and a lot of the time he falls asleep before we even try to get him to sleep. His bed time has definitely changed from 20h00 to 19h00 and now most nights even earlier than that. After that he moans a bit, and I will offer my boob and he will drink for at least 10-15 minutes, which is longer that he drinks during the day. Usually he drinks around 22h00, 1h00-2h00 in the morning and then somewhere between 4h00 and 5h00 again, but all those times he will not actually wake up. So it’s all dream feeds. So he is getting enough sleep and he is sleeping well, it’s just me that’s not sleeping well, because I have to wake up for those feeds.

I had hoped that feeding baby G solids will help him sleep through, but it’s made no difference. I read 2 other books on baby sleep training and their suggestions have also not helped. If baby G is on a strict routine or not, it does not make a difference to his night sleeping. I must say things have improved slightly and gradually lately, so I’m hoping that he will eventually really sleep through soon in such a way that I can also sleep through the night.

During the day he takes about 3 naps, sometimes 2 if one is long. I think he sleeps quite well during the day, but he still wants to sleep either in my arms or in bed next to me. Most often if I lie him down and leave the room he will wake again after about 5 minutes. There are a few exceptions, because yesterday morning he slept for 1.5 hours alone in our room.

Clothes and nappies: I’m dressing baby G mostly in 6-12 months clothes now. It’s still a little big, but since it’s the middle of the winter now and quite cold, I’m dressing him warmly and all the warm clothes are that size. I felt it would be wasteful to buy 3-6 months clothes if he would outgrow in within 1-2 months, so I rather bought it bigger and then I know it will last until the end of winter. The 3-6 months clothes still fit, although some of his pants leg’s seem a bit short now. He is also still wearing some 0-3 months short sleeve vests under the warm clothes, surprisingly it still fits his body, but I think not for much longer.

Nappies are still size 3 but we are using eco nappies now too.

Milestones: Baby G sits so well now! He can sit for a long time without falling over. He won’t even fall over if he sits on an uneven surface that moves a bit, like someone’s lap, and he can pick things up in front or to the side or back and come back up without any problems. He also recently started to pull himself up by grabbing my arm or clothes and he can actually stand on his knees after pulling himself up. If I help him he will stand up on his feet.

He also goes forward from a sitting position on to his knees, leaning his upper body on his arms and rocking forwards and backwards, so it seems crawling is next on his agenda. He ends up flat on his stomach at the moment, but I think it won’t be long before he figures out the correct position for crawling. He is also rolling a lot, and somehow manages to move like a little worm, so very often if I put him down on the floor he will move a metre or two from his original position.

My most favourite thing is the fact that baby G gives hugs now – there is nothing like the feeling of those little arms tight around my neck. He is such an affectionate child, I get a lot of hugs during the day, and DH is also treated to the biggest smile and hugs when he comes home at night.

Baby G is responding to his name now – If I call him by his name he will look at me.

Firsts: We went away for a midweek break last week, so baby G had his first mini-vacation. It was to the bushveld and we saw lots of game like giraffe’s, kudu, impala, waterbuck, zebra’s, eland, blesbuck, njala, red hartebeast and even 2 jackal. We took long walks in the veldt pushing baby G in the pram and he had some of his best naps ever in there. It was just a lovely time for DH to bond again with baby G and also a much needed break for both DH and I.

Baby G also got his first cold, but fortunately it was not bad, just a bit of a snot nose and a bit of fever one day, but he bounced back brilliantly and the paediatrician said he is healthy again when he checked him this morning.

This past weekend was also the first time that baby G and I were apart. I left him with his dad while I had my hair done and I also did some shopping afterwards. I phoned home twice, to hear if he was ok, in the 3 hours I was away. It was not easy for me, but when I came back it did not look like he missed me at all.